Make No Mistake About It, What Drives Them Is Hatred, Period!

American racial seg­re­ga­tion was not a thing until white planters real­ized that the Black enslaved pop­u­la­tion and the white bonds peo­ple and the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of poor whites who lived around plan­ta­tions large and small, oper­at­ed peace­ably togeth­er. This was a prob­lem that was anti­thet­i­cal to their long-term goals.
Divide and con­quer were established.
Perhaps the best char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of that peri­od I have seen is from (Conditions of Antebellum Slavery) by PBS.
Fully ³⁄₄ of Southern whites did not even own slaves; of those who did, 88% owned 20 or few­er. Whites who did not own slaves were pri­mar­i­ly yeo­man farm­ers. Practically speak­ing, the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery did not help these people.[sic] I’m afraid I have to dis­agree that they did not ben­e­fit, nev­er­the­less let us continue.
And yet, many non-slave-own­ing white Southerners iden­ti­fied with, and defend­ed the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery. Though many resent­ed the large slave­hold­ers’ wealth and pow­er, they aspired to own slaves them­selves, and join the priv­i­leged Ranks’. Also, slav­ery gave the poor white farm­ers a group of peo­ple to feel supe­ri­or to.
(They may have been poor, but they were not slaves, and they were not black. They gained a sense of pow­er sim­ply by being white). The pow­er and priv­i­lege they gained would become a sig­nif­i­cant cur­ren­cy that prob­a­bly exceeds any oth­er deriv­a­tive form they could have acquired, hence my dis­agree­ment with the quote.

“Having some­one to feel supe­ri­or to.”, ele­ments of that men­tal manip­u­la­tion still guides the think­ing of many whites today.
The con­tin­u­a­tion of that mind­set has con­tin­ued to impov­er­ish whites across the South and oth­er parts of the coun­try, while those not so con­strained by racial hatred have been mak­ing phe­nom­e­nal strides, includ­ing recent­ly formed immi­grant communities.
Nowhere is this more evi­denced than in the so-called red states, or should I say the for­mer slave states? Poorer, than the rest of the nation, yet they con­tin­ue to vote their col­or instead of for poli­cies that would ben­e­fit them and inex­orably empow­er and lift them out of poverty.
As they do so, first-gen­er­a­tion Americans soar to pow­er and lead­er­ship posi­tions, even with­in their own Republican party.
Colin Powell, for­mer four-star General, chair­man of the joint chiefs, for­mer sec­re­tary of state, Nicky Haley, for­mer Governor of South Carolina. Bobby Jindal, for­mer Governor of Louisiana, Alejandro Mayorkas Homeland Security Secretary, et al. But none more con­se­quen­tial than the ground­break­ing Kamala Harris, first woman, the first woman of col­or to be Vice President of the United States.
The list is long and var­ied; it is not con­fined to those well known polit­i­cal­ly; first-gen­er­a­tion Americans are mak­ing huge strides in tech­nol­o­gy, busi­ness, med­i­cine, and many oth­er areas, tak­ing full advan­tage of the American expe­ri­ence, the American oppor­tu­ni­ties, despite the bar­ri­ers and challenges…

Instead of chang­ing course, chang­ing their mind­set from the mis­in­for­ma­tion fed them, many whites con­tin­ue down the path of hatred and griev­ance. The immi­grants are tak­ing their jobs; “Oh, so you did­n’t both­er going to col­lege, but the tech-engi­neer took your job?
The sense of hatred is so pal­pa­ble that they chose a failed con-man to be their pres­i­dent rather than an immi­nent­ly qual­i­fied woman. Make no mis­take about it; what dri­ves them is hatred, period!
They are vora­cious con­sumers of mis­in­for­ma­tion, which con­firms their hatred and inse­cu­ri­ties. Racial dem­a­gogues like the recent­ly deceased Rush Limbaugh made tons of mon­ey feed­ing them the hatred he knew they would clam­or for. They elect­ed Donald Trump anoth­er dem­a­gogue, and he want­ed them to know that he could out racist- the vilest racists.
Wherever racist caus­es were, Trump made sure to sup­port them. In the end, Donald Trump bestowed upon Rush Limbaugh the pres­i­den­tial medal of freedom.
The deep affec­tion they feel and declare for Donald Trump has noth­ing to do with Trump’s per se. What they hon­or and adore is that some­one in a posi­tion of pow­er sup­ports the cause.
For them, an unabashed racist dem­a­gogue who does­n’t have the com­mon sense to know bet­ter, or the intel­lec­tu­al matu­ri­ty to want to do bet­ter was exact­ly what they want­ed all along. If he were ever to stop being that, they would dump him in a minute.
Even as the world moves on, leav­ing them behind, they cling to the mis­guid­ed ideas of white supe­ri­or­i­ty plant­ed in the heads of their ances­tors hun­dreds of years ago to keep them in check.
Today, they see their worth in their whiteness.
And so, in their world of blind­ness, a one-eyed racial­ist is the per­fect choice to be king.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.